TGO CHALLENGE 2011: DAY 2

SATURDAY 12th MAY 2011

Clickable map and most of the photos too!

With the rain hammering down for most of the night, the rivers were full to the brim this morning, roaring like trains. The clouds were shrouding the hills and there were fierce little gusts down in the valley, so who knows what it would be like on the intended fair-weather route for today; the north Mullardoch Munros.

 

This gave us a bit of a dilemma: If the rivers were really in spate, our foul weather route might also be a bit dodgy, as there are a few biggies flowing into Loch Mullardoch. I knew that the first one had a bridge above the hut at Glen Cannich but my recollection of that bridge was that it was a skinny slippery narrow timber job with no handrail above a rocky gorge with a torrent; not a good prospect for a bloke with a very dodgy head for heights in a strong wind!

 

Perhaps a better option would be to skip over the low bealach north of Mam Ruisgte and head for Glen Strathfarrar, Struy and then on to Drumnadrochit? We would see what the river was like a few miles to the east and besides, the rain was easing, so perhaps by the time we got to the nasty crossings on Mullardoch, if the rain held off, the levels might be dropping? Andy, Lilo, Robert & me set off into a blustery day.

 

This was what presented itself at our first crossing after about an hour…

 

We followed it upstream until it became more manageable. Here’s Andy striding across at the good bit.
 

You will see from the map that we opted to risk Mullardoch as the rain was still holding off, and here Lilo left us to do his route to Struy. That just left Andy, Robert and me. The next few pictures tell the story themselves; a blustery day with little stormlets chasing us all the way down to the north shore of Mullardoch.

 

Halfway along Mullardoch there is a ruin and here we caught up with Carl, who was just setting off having had a breather. He had started at Dornie and we played tag with him for the rest of the afternoon.

 

 

With a huge sense of relief, when we reached the dodgy bridge of death we saw that it had been replaced with a new, wide, solid looking bridge, so the impending doom just vanished away. We bumped into Brian Shepherd who had managed a crafty camp on the hut’s veranda. Brian was a bit fed up with Mullardoch – it does seem to go on forever! But we stalwarts crashed on for another 5km to the next big crossing – but we didn’t find a bridge for this one so waded it below the falls.

 

The three of us were joined by Carl and we camped in a fine little bog just above a sheltering stand of pines half a mile past the Allt Taige; it has to be said, quite knackered!

 

At this point Andy discovered that Wendy – his Warmilte 2R – had applied for planning permission for a basement and indeed had already started the excavations through her groundsheet. Andy was very stoical about it all and took her firmly in hand and beasted her with duct tape, sticking plasters, NeoAir plasters and spit: None of which staunched the little spring that bubbled into his tent… It was quite a rough night as well… ooh dear!